


Slow Dance

by moonflares (jennyhearts)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: M/M, it's cute fluff!, very brief mentions of dimitri and byleth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 18:23:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20746700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jennyhearts/pseuds/moonflares
Summary: While everyone else is busy dancing the night away at the Garreg Mach Ball, Felix finds a better use of his time.





	Slow Dance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alt_reaYoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alt_reaYoon/gifts).

> A VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY DEAR SISTER, MEG!! Thanks for being such a great friend and source of support over these last few years! I'm very thankful to have met and gotten to know you! First time writing Sylvix so I'm hoping I did your good bois justice aaaaaa

Eight hundred and twenty-one.

Eight hundred and twenty-two.

Eight hundred and twenty-three—

He snaps his wrist just a little too hard, angling the edge of the wooden sword just a little too sharply, lobbing the head of the training dummy right off its shoulders. Amber eyes track the head as it spins into the air, leaving a trail of straw in its wake. It flies high enough to kiss the silver moon hanging in the cloudless sky before falling inelegantly back to the dusty ground, exploding into a sad little heap.

Felix sighs as he straightens up to his full height. He doesn’t look forward to explaining how he managed to decapitate not one but two training dummies in the span of one night. He can already feel his professor’s dark eyes boring into him, can imagine the dark-haired man intercepting him before he could make a quick escape after class to ask if he would like to join him for tea, can already hear him ask in that toneless voice of his if there was anything bothering Felix recently that perhaps he could offer assistance with.

He shivers at the idea of opening up to the professor—because Felix already knows that it would be much _ too easy _ to do so—and comes up with the imaginary solution of using the boar as a distraction for his imaginary predicament. He would claim ill and send the prince off to the gardens in his place.

His Beastliness would no doubt be ecstatic to spend more time with their new professor. In fact—loud peals of laughter erupt from behind the tall hedge that protected the training grounds from prying eyes—Felix doesn’t think it all that farfetched to imagine that they were spending time together right this moment. Perhaps the boar would finally summon up enough courage to ask the quiet man for a dance. Sickening is an understatement to what Felix feels when he catches sight of how the boar looks at their professor, all starstrucked and awed, as if the expressionless man holds all the answers in the world, as if he could save the prince from the demons that he so masochistically, so _ willingly _ allows to haunt him.

Felix knows better.

Dimitri has long crossed the line of no return. 

And it wasn’t as if the prince has any intention of turning back.

Felix taps the blade of the wooden sword against his hip, eyeing the last training dummy left in the arena that still had its head attached. He still has a hundred and seventy-seven swings to go to complete his daily training regime and the last dummy’s neck had lasted well over five hundred hits before it gave out. 

Making his decision, Felix is about to make his way over to the dummy when a loud rustling from his right draws his attention. He spins towards the sound, raising the sword as his legs spread apart to adopt a defensive stance. 

“A little help here?” asks a voice that Felix has the unfortunate pleasure of being much too familiar with. He squints as he takes one step forward towards the voice, trying to match a face to the struggling sounds coming from the bush. He sighs deeply and drops all caution when he spots a shock of red hair peeking out from the mess of limbs flailing around amidst the shrubbery.

Felix doesn’t help Sylvain escape from his leafy entanglement. He stands with his arms crossed over his chest while he watches his childhood friend struggle but ultimately succeed in breaking free from the thorns and branches that were holding him captive.

“What are you doing here?” Felix asks before spinning on his heel and walking towards his original purpose.

“Looking for you, of course!” He hears Sylvain scramble after him, his footsteps loud and heavy compared to Felix’s light and nimble ones. “I should be the one asking _ you _ what you’re doing here. Training on the night of the ball? Do you hate fun that much?”

“I don’t have time to waste on dancing.”

“Awww, don’t be like that. I remember how much you loved to dance when we were kids. Don’t you remember how you would pester me to—Hey!”

Sylvain yowls when Felix smacks the flat side of the sword against his arm. The redhead clutches at the spot where he was slapped, complaining in an incensed tone about how heartless Felix was being, when he had come all this way to look for him too!

Still, he continues to trail after Felix, following him to the training dummy despite his grievances, though he makes sure that there is enough distance between them to be out of the sword’s slapping range.

Felix blocks out the rest of Sylvain’s complaints as he comes to a stop in front of the dummy. He inhales deeply through his nose before letting the breath whistle out from his mouth. Relaxed muscles become taut with tension when Felix smoothly shifts into an offensive stance, raising the sword high above his head before abruptly bringing it down. The wooden blade thumps against the straw neck but the dummy’s head stays intact. 

Good.

Eight hundred and twenty-four.

Sylvain doesn’t say anything else as he sits down and watches Felix rain down blows on the dummy, alternating at random between swift strikes and slower but more powerful swings. Sweat beads on his forehead and his nape, the droplets cruising down the bumps of his spine. The back of his shirt clings to his back, the strands of dark hair that frames his face becoming damp. Felix can feel his hair beginning to come loose from its bun and it annoys him to no end.

“I didn’t ask you to look for me.” Eight hundred and fourty-three.

“Huh? What was that?”

“Go back to the ball.”

“Don’t wanna.”

“You’re being a nuisance!”

“How am I being a nuisance? I’m just sitting here!”

_ That’s the entire problem! _ Felix wants to snap at him but instead he counts eight-hundred and sixty-one in his mind and grinds his teeth down onto his bottom lip instead. Felix can’t concentrate with Sylvain sitting there and watching him like a hawk, his eyes trained on his face as if they were following each sweat drop that disappeared into the collar of his shirt.

Felix lands his nine hundredth hit when Sylvain speaks up again.

“Felix.”

Nine hundred and three.

Nine hundred and thirty-six.

“Felix. Hey, Felix.”

Nine hundred and sixty-nine. 

“Felix, do you want to dance with me?”

Sylvain makes a low sound of appreciation when Felix’s nine hundred and seventieth slice severes the dummy’s head from its neck. The head doesn’t soar into the sky this time, instead tumbling against the flat of Felix’s blade before toppling to land by his right foot with a quiet splat, the straw spilling from the sack. 

Felix whirls towards Sylvain, fury in the pressed line of his mouth and the hardened amber of his eyes. The redhead is grinning at him, hints of his pearly white teeth peeking past stretched lips. Unbridled rage makes ugly red splotches that burn Felix from the inside out bloom all over his body, but the heat that rushes to nest in his cheeks and the back of his eyes is especially unbearable.

“What number did you get to?”

“Nine hundred and seventy,” Felix spits out, not quite sure why he’s still talking to Sylvain and not jabbing the end of his wooden sword into the redhead’s accursed caramel-coloured eyes yet.

“Shame. So close to a thousand.”

“I can still finish. There’s an easy target right here.”

“No way!” Sylvain laughs freely as he gets back up onto his feet, holding his neck protectively as if he could shield it from Felix’s eyes. “You never aim anywhere else but the neck. You’ll take my head off before you even get thirty swings in.”

“How surprising. You can count.”

“Felix!”

Felix turns away when Sylvain approaches, jabbing his sword into the now decapitated training dummy’s body unhappily. Thirty more hits. He was so close. If only that stupid idiot hadn’t caught him off-guard—

A hand wraps around his wrist, rubbing ticklish circles into the inside of his wrist in an attempt to coax Felix into relaxing. He hadn’t even realized that his knuckles had gone white from how tightly he was gripping the handle of the sword. 

Felix loosens his hold and he feels the handle dislodging itself from the deep indents he had pressed into his palm. Sylvain pulls the sword from Felix’s hand and even he is surprised by how easily it slips from his fingers. The sword drops to the floor and Felix _ should _be jamming his heel into the toe of Sylvain’s boot for treating the weapon so disrespectfully, but he can’t quite think past the feeling of Sylvain’s hands on his, massaging the tight knots in the muscles, feather-light touches that were not quite caresses on the rough callouses, rolling each individual joint in his fingers with a practiced gentleness that had irritation crawling all over Felix’s skin again.

It is a feeling that is unique to the redhead. A feeling that is unique to Sylvain Gautier.

It makes Felix sick to his stomach. 

“Come on, Felix,” Sylvain tries again, voice barely above a whisper, as if he’s afraid that he’ll scare Felix off if he speaks any louder. “Just one dance? For old time’s sake.”

A moment passes before he adds, almost like an afterthought. “I’ll let you hit me thirty times! Just not my neck, alright?”

Felix wants to rip his hand out of Sylvain’s much bigger ones. But that unbearable, _ incomprehensible, _ heat has spread from his face to his hands, melting the one trapped in Sylvain’s to the redhead’s own, skin to skin, flesh to flesh, bone to bone even, so they were merely two parts metamorphosed into one.

So Felix grits out a clipped, “Fine,” and keeps his hand in Sylvain’s while the other finds Sylvain’s shoulder, fingers turning into claws, digging his nails into the thick weave of the uniform jacket

There’s a stupid look of surprise on Sylvain’s face. His eyes are wide, allowing more moonlight to illuminate the dark, ebony pupils and round irises that looked more silver than caramel from where Felix had to crane his neck to look up at him.

Eventually, Sylvain’s fingers curl into the empty spaces in between Felix’s. His other hand snakes down the curve of Felix’s back and settles lightly on his waist. Irritation flares once more, a lifetime’s worth of dancing lessons drilled into him since he could walk screeches at Felix, his dancing instructor’s shrill voice screaming that this was _ wrong, wrong, wrong! _

He ignores the voice and moves the hand that was on Sylvain’s shoulder to take hold of the hand on his waist, moving it so it rested snugly on the small of his back instead. His dancing teacher is appeased and Felix shoves the voice back into the too small box where he keeps all his childhood memories locked away. Sylvain makes a little “oh” sound before apologizing. Felix just grunts. 

“The music’s stopped,” before, when Felix was still in the process of sending the training dummies to their inevitable beheading, he could still hear the music drifting from the direction of the ballroom. It had been muffled, of course, making it near impossible to pick out the instruments that were a part of the ensemble, but the melody had been clear enough for Felix to grasp, to hum along to as he swung his blade without stopping.

But now it was silent all around them save for the sounds of their own breathing. Felix suddenly becomes very aware of how close he is standing to Sylvain and how just mere minutes ago, he had been sweating so much that his shirt had been soaked through.

“We’ll make our own music,” the redhead replies simply, flashing Felix another smile, sending his heart rate spiking in what must be incredibly unhealthy levels when he yanks Felix closer to him without warning. 

Felix curses aloud when his face bumps into Sylvain’s chest, his legs nearly getting tangled with Sylvain’s longer ones when he stumbles forward clumsily. Sylvain just laughs, clutching the smaller, angrier man to him, bringing an unwilling Felix with him as he takes a step back. 

It’s all Felix can do to follow his lead, unable to correct his position, unable to put some distance between their bodies—because Sylvain is unnaturally _ warm _ for someone who grew up in the harsh and cold climates of Faerghus—unable to avoid inhaling the nauseating mixture of perfumes clinging to the front of Sylvain’s shirt he took a breath.

They slow dance to the song in Sylvain’s head. Felix thinks it’s a stupid dance, since they’re shuffling back and forth in place more than actually dancing. One step forward, one step back, rinse and repeat. Still, Felix figures that it could be worse. This was bearable enough for him to allow Sylvain to keep him within his embrace. 

Felix doesn’t know when his head came to rest on Sylvain’s shoulder, or when Sylvain had shifted their joined hands so that they were pressed above his heart. Thump, thump, thump. A soothing and steady rhythm, much like the redhead himself in Felix’s too turbulent life. An unchanging constant that perhaps Felix isn’t too annoyed with on his good days. He doesn’t realize when he starts humming to the melody of it, eyes drifting close so he could hear its song better. 

“Hey, Felix.”

Felix keeps humming, keeps his eyes closed.

“You can aim for my heart.”

“What?” He peels one eye open at the sudden, nonsensical comment. He can’t see Sylvain’s face that well from this angle, but he’s a little reluctant to move his head from where it’s resting; this nice, clean spot that is perfume-free and smells only of the snow-covered trees in the forests behind the Gautier estate.

“Later, when you’re finishing training.”

A disgruntled sound rumbles from Felix’s throat and he closes his eye again. 

“Necks only.”

Sylvain laughs again, and maybe, though Felix is more certain that he’s imagining it, a smile pulls at the corner of his own mouth. 

  


**Author's Note:**

> I haven't had the chance to play Three Houses yet so I apologize for any mistakes in regards to any facts or locations pertaining to the game orz


End file.
